momagri, movement for a world agricultural organization, is a think tank chaired by Christian Pèes.It brings together, managers from the agricultural world and important people from external perspectives, such as health, development, strategy and defense. Its objective is to promote regulationof agricultural markets by creating new evaluation tools, such as economic models and indicators,and by drawing up proposals for an agricultural and international food policy.

Will there be an outbreak of food riots in 2040?

July 6, 2015

The prospective scenario in a recent report by the British insurer Lloyds of London should make us shudder. According to the researchers in charge of this report, in 2040 the world will experience a societal collapse on a global scale due to food shortages and there will be an outbreak of food riots if measures are not taken beforehand.

These prospects are all the more disturbing when according to United Nations estimates for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); we need to produce 70% more by 2050 to feed the 9.1 billion people who will populate the Earth. In developing countries, production is expected to even double by then.

According to the worst case scenario drawn up by Lloyds, “a shock in production that will affect numerous regions and agricultural produce” will lead to the collapse of the global food system; a comprehensive food system that is already “under chronic pressure and which must meet a growing demand. Its vulnerability to disorder aggravated by factors such as climate change, water stress, ongoing globalization and political instability”.

Our food system is at the end of its tether and is becoming increasingly more vulnerable to unanticipated events and constrained by price hyper-volatility and increased systemic risk, the report said. Lloyd's estimates that as well as the return of El Nino, a soybean rust epidemic in Latin America and a wheat rust epidemic in the Caucasus, would be sufficient to plummet the entire global production from 7% to 11% for corn, soybean, rice and wheat. As a result their prices could quadruple compared to their value in 2000 (500% increase in rice prices in particular). Finally, the combination of these exogenous risks and the endogenous risks relative to market stability could potentially create significant social and political unrest especially in the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America.

What then are the alternatives beyond the urgent need to get out of this wait-and-see position? The fight against food waste and climate risks, the conservation of our water resources, continued research and innovation, will remain our missions for the coming decades. But they may not be sustainable without international cooperation and a binding framework able to establish principles, tools and indicators.